Setting Up Camps

Adirondack Environmentalists, Family Clash Over Estate Plans

ALBANY, N.Y. — The Whitney family plans to develop 15,000 acres of its massive Adirondack estate, an event environmentalists have feared for decades.

Whitney Industries, owned by socialite Marylou Whitney and her children, currently uses the 51,000-acre private park for family recreation and timber production.

John Hendrickson, the company's vice president, said the family has decided to subdivide 15,000 northern acres and build a hotel, general store, restaurant, clubhouse and 40 exclusive shoreline estates. The remaining 36,000 acres would stay in the family's hands.

Gov. George Pataki immediately ordered a top aide to enter negotiations with the Whitney family to see whether the state could instead acquire the land for public use.

"The Whitney family, for 100 years, has kept this magnificent parcel intact and undeveloped. They have treasured it," said Neil Woodworth, attorney for the Adirondack Mountain Club. "This is a 180-degree change in direction. We're nonplussed and shocked."

Woodworth questioned whether Hendrickson, who debuted as Marylou Whitney's much-younger beau on the Saratoga Springs social scene last summer, is the force behind the change.

Asked to respond to the environmentalists' statements, Hendrickson said, "I wasn't aware they were paying taxes on the property."

Environmentalists and state officials have coveted the land in Hamilton County because it's the largest remaining privately owned parcel in the state's 6 million-acre Adirondack Park.

Little Tupper Lake, with more than 20 miles of shoreline, is the largest privately owned lake in the Northeast. The parcel also contains nine ponds.

Hendrickson said the family wants to start marketing the property in mid-May.

The "great camps," he said, would sell for about $1.5 million apiece and would each come with a winterized 4-to-8-bedroom home.

"They'll be the most exclusive in the Northeast--the most beautiful camps in the Northeast," he said.

Environmentalists worried that the land would be lost forever from public use, noting its development would break up a historic network of canoe routes and prevent the creation of a new wilderness park.

"This subdivision plan represents the greatest threat to the integrity of the Adirondack Park's ecosystem since the Adirondack Park Agency was founded more than 20 years ago," said David Miller, executive director of the National Audubon Society of New York State.

"We need the governor to personally intervene and use his conservation leadership to prevent this tragedy."

Environmentalists want Pataki to purchase the land with proceeds from the recently approved $1.75 billion environmental bond act.

After the Whitney family announcement, Pataki directed his counsel, Michael Finnegan, to begin discussions with the family and find out if the state could acquire the land.

Woodworth estimated that the entire Whitney Park is worth $40 million to $50 million. But Hendrickson said the firm expects to gross $60 million on the 15,000-acre subdivision.

Although the family would consider a reasonable, fair-market-value offer from the state, he said, the family right now is committed to the subdivision plan.

"We have spent a lot of time and money on this plan," he said. "That's what we're focusing on 100 percent."

Hendrickson said the family could, theoretically, build 297 homes on the 15,000 acres, according to APA guidelines.

"We have shown tremendous environmental consideration by giving up the building rights we have," he said. "We are committed to preserving as much open space as we can. I'm sorry the environmentalists aren't happy, but as a business we didn't have another option."

The land was originally acquired in 1897 by William C. Whitney, and the family holdings have covered as much as 80,000 acres.

Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, a part-time resident of Saratoga Springs and scion of Eli Whitney and Cornelius Vanderbilt, passed the property to his widow, Marylou, when he died in 1992.